Tuesday, November 25, 2003

decided to rearrange the stuff in my room. i have done this several times before but this time was going to be different. i was going to start throwing away some things.

i started with the shelves, then the boxes of accumulated stuff over the years. i had not done general cleaning since i came home so i knew this was going to take a long time.

frames with pictures i would rather not look at. they were the first to go.

letters. lots of them. little notes written on recycled paper from my dorm days which contained stuff ranging from "i left some food in your room..." to "i love you so much." to "you locked me out of the room!"

there were also letters from grade school complete with rhymes and mistakes.

and of course, letters from my exes. pictures. one shoe box for each ex....

it's amazing that despite years of being together (one for 1.5 years, another for 3 years, another for almost 8 years)
you end up with one shoebox for each of those periods in your life. one meazly box. (blame email?)

i opened them and looked through some letters. tore some pictures up, threw some notes out. it was liberating, but at the same time it made me horribly sad. it would be a first for me, throwing away letters and pictures.

remembering made me melancholy. for a moment i was so lonely i almost let the tears fall. but i kept them in check. then i realized something. i'm a little harder now. a little more jaded. a little less sentimental.

and that realization made me feel sadder. it was like throwing bits and pieces of my life away.

i know that it is necessary. you have to make space in your life to accomodate new loves, new friends. just like a cabinet. you throw out things you don't want, things you don't need. then you fill it up again with those that you do.

i guess i'm just going through the final stages of letting go.

i think it's time for me to sanitize, heal, and scar. and if i have to be harder to do it, so be it.